"Spin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Puritan dress in which I first saw her was a thing of the past; she clothed herself now like the parrakeets in the forest,—or liker the lilies of the field, for verily she toiled not, neither did she spin. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... from the threatening danger. The engineer not being aware of anything wrong with the train, glided serenely along, unconscious of the pandemonium, in the rear. But when all had about left the train, and the great driving-wheels began to spin around like mad, from the lightening of the load, the master of the throttle looked to the rear. There lay stretched prone upon the ground, or limping on one foot, or rolling over in the dirt, some bareheaded and coatless, boxes and trunks scattered ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... field blossomed, and countless little blue flowers opened their calyxes to the golden sun. When the flowers had withered and the seed was ripe, Holda came once more to teach the peasant and his wife how to harvest the flax—for such it was—and from it to spin, weave, and bleach linen. As the people of the neighbourhood willingly purchased both linen and flax-seed, the peasant and his wife soon grew very rich indeed, and while he ploughed, sowed, and harvested, she spun, wove, and bleached ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... traveled in state in the mess-wagon of the "Custer Trail," and hour on hour, about the camp-fire on the round-up, Eaton would play to the dreamy delight of the weary men. The leading spirit of those evenings was Bill Dantz, who knew a hundred songs by heart, and could spin an actual happening into a yarn so thrilling and so elaborate in every detail that no one could tell precisely where the foundation of fact ended and the Arabian dome and minaret of iridescent ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... himself round with velocity in the opposite direction; continued to spin until his long cloak was all wound neatly about him; clapped his cap on his head, very much on one side (for it could not stand upright without going through the ceiling), gave an additional twist to his corkscrew moustaches, ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... dream's come true. Ho, lodgers, ho, This portent view. Glyce has vanished, carrying off my cock, My cock that crew! O Mania, help! O reads of the rock Pursue! pursue! For I poor girl, was working within, Holding my distaff heavy and full, Twir-r-r-r-r-rling my hand as the threads I spin, Weaving an excellent bobbin of wool: Thinking 'To-morrow I'll go to the fair, In the dusk of the morn, and be selling it there.' But he to the blue upflew, upflew, On the lightliest tips of his wings outspread; To me he bequeathed ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... tower tall. And maidens three are living there All in the upper chamber fair, Hung with silver, hung with pall, And stories painted on the wall. And softly goes the whirring loom In my ladies' upper room, For they shall spin both night and day Until the stars do pass away. But every night at evening. The window open wide they fling, And one of them says a word they know And out as three white swans they go, And the murmuring of the woods is drowned In ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... inglorious campaign in Italy. The treaty between the Pope and the Duke of Alva was signed on the 14th September (1557), and the Spanish general retired for the winter to Milan. Cardinal Caraffa was removed from the French court to that of Madrid, there to spin new schemes for the embroilment of nations and the advancement of his own family. Very little glory was gained by any of the combatants in this campaign. Spain, France, nor Paul IV., not one of them ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sure, pass in Edinburgh. I saw the kerseymere fabric that obtained the prize in London, and nothing could be more beautiful; for the calicoes, I believe we cannot produce them cheaper or better. A writer in a journal here, observes: 'Why should our cotton go to England to be spun when we can spin it in Massachusetts?' A very pertinent question, well worth thinking of at home. We should be thankful to the projectors of the Crystal Palace, that it has opened our eyes, for nothing else could. There is no manner ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... his wheel and began a spin that terminated only when the biggest Plymouth Rock in Duncan's coop saluted a new day, and long lines of light reddened the east. As he rode he sang, while he sang he worshiped, but the god he tried to glorify was a ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... plain:[61] So comes the squall, blacker than night, Upon the Adrian main. How, by our Sire Quirinus,[62] It was a goodly sight 650 To see the thirty standards Swept down the tide of flight. So flies the spray of Adria When the black squall doth blow, So corn-sheaves in the flood-time 655 Spin down the whirling Po. False Sextus to the mountains Turned first his horse's head; And fast fled Ferentinum, And fast Lanuvium fled. 660 The horsemen of Nomentum Spurred hard out of the fray, The footmen of Velitrae Threw shield and ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... what would have been the novels conceived by Tennyson. Thomas Hardy began with poetry and has returned to poetry; and one cannot help feeling that it is more than anything else the absence of this quality in the autobiographical studies of sex and character which the younger writers of our day spin out that makes them after a time seem so ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... this old car," Westy shouted. "If we leave it maybe the wind will carry it up. Let's tie it with our rope and come back here and eat our supper in it on the way home. After that it can spin around till it gets dizzy for all we ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of adequate expression, "he's here. He is, I fancy, at this moment slapping the skipper on the back and asking him to have a drink. He called me 'old socks.'" The doctor shuddered. "Then he said he expected this was some mess; Naval messes were always hot stuff. He wanted to spin me yarns of his infant excesses, but I choked him off by telling him he ought to report to the skipper. You'll have to look after him, Pay. That will give you some honest work ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... elderly seaman with a wounded thigh. Indeed, my courage had begun to rise so high that I allowed myself a few darting thoughts on what would be the end of the affair; and while I saw certainly that I could spin it out for long, I saw no ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not all the life God giveth them to use; Let them prove their inward souls against the notion That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, As if Fate in each were stark! And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... that dwells in that web! For you are a garden-spider, an abominable, dumpy, old garden-spider, for whom a web, such as Hodge is, is much too fine and much too elegant. Be quiet, therefore, old spider, and spin your net elsewhere! You shall not live in my net, but Tib—for, yes, I do know Tib. She is a lovely, charming child of fourteen, as quick and nimble as a kid, with lips red as the coral which you wear on your fat pudding of a neck, with eyes which shine yet brighter than your nose, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... tube by means of a pair of strong hooks at the posterior end of its soft defenceless abdomen. Their food appears for the most part to be of a vegetable nature. Some species, however, are alleged to be carnivorous, and a North American form of the genus Hydropsyche is said to spin around the mouth of its burrow a silken net for the capture of small animal organisms living in the water. Before passing into the pupal stage, the larva partially closes the orifice of the tube with silk or pieces of stone loosely ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... no needcessity," said Pop complacently, taking a long twist of tobacco from his pocket. "Sal don't need no larnin'. She's pearter then most gals thet's got book sense. You show me ary one of these gals round here thet kin spin an' weave the cloth to mek ther own dresses, thet kin mold candles, an' mek soap, an' hoe terbaccy, an' handle a ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... so I have been left alone and without means. But since you are kind enough to receive me, I shall repay you for your hospitality. I have been taught the work of women, although my condition did not oblige me to perform it. I can spin and weave linen with thread of various colours; I can imitate flowers and embroider ornaments on stuffs; I can even, when you are tired by your work and overcome by the heat of the day, delight you with song, harp, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Then wed thee Unto some son of clay, and toil and spin! There's Japhet loves thee well, hath loved thee long: Marry, and bring ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... On unpacking our baggage on arrival in the bush, found my mother's spinning-wheel was broken. Gordon managed to mend it and I bought ten pounds of wool. This she washed, teased, and carded, and proud she was when she sat down and began to spin the rolls into yarn. Tuesday afternoon Ailie and Ruth went to pick wild grapes, and the rest of us were at our work in the bush. Grannie was left alone. She had moved her wheel to the door to sit in the sunshine, ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... the range to which each individual's attention is confined. It is possible (the writer has known it to be a fact) for the same person to sow the flax, to pull and rot it, to break it, hatchel it, spin it, warp it, weave it, dye or bleach it, and finally make it into clothes. I say this is possible, for I have seen it done, and I dare say many of my readers have seen the same. But how coarse and expensive is such a product, compared with that in which every step in the progress of production ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... of gold and green Such as caterpillars spin, For the fairy ways, I ween, Are very frugal; He'd a bow that he had borne Since the crimson Eden morn, And a honeysuckle horn For ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... it need only be said that it is a pleasure resort singularly like other pleasure resorts of the same description, we started bicycling in earnest. We planned a ten days' tour, which, while completing the Black Forest, should include a spin down the Donau-Thal, which for the twenty miles from Tuttlingen to Sigmaringen is, perhaps, the finest valley in Germany; the Danube stream here winding its narrow way past old-world unspoilt villages; past ancient monasteries, nestling in green pastures, ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... as the sky, His words, like whirlwinds, spin on high Systems and creeds pellmell together; 'Tis strange as to a deaf man's eye, While trees uprooted splinter by, The dumb turmoil of stormy weather; Less of iconoclast than shaper, His spirit, safe behind the reach Of the tornado of his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... was worked on communistic principles. Teachers and students must all take their share in manual labour. Lectures on Greek and Latin must be given in the intervals of ploughing, or printing, or teaching Maori children to read or hoe or spin. Each "associate" received a fixed salary; all profits went to the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... little wind storm, I reckon,' says Bachelder. Bachelder was settin', with his legs curled up under him, mendin' sail, and he begun to spin one o' them yarns o' hisn, with his voice pitched up middlin' high, and the boys, they begun to laugh ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... at first without talk of ransom and in high tone, affected, no doubt, by William to spin out the negotiations, and augment the value of his services, did Guy of Ponthieu consent to release his illustrious captive,—the guerdon, a large sum and un bel maneir [189] on the river Eaulne. But whether that guerdon ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... work," thought the dame. "I would I might sing and spin like that!" and with a little sigh she leaned her head against the door-post and closed her eyes; a sweet, pale face, colorless and pure as an Easter lily, and eyes whose blueness seemed to show through the weary lids with their deep golden fringe. A fair woman, a lovely woman, delicately ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... that it is not a book to be read with as much ease as its pleasant style may lead you to imagine. You spin through it as if it were a novel the first time you read it, and think you know all about it; the second time you read it you think you know rather less about it; and the third time, you are amazed to find how little you have really apprehended its ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... They could cut glass, at the most remote periods. Chinese bottles have also been found in previously unopened tombs of the eighteenth dynasty, indicating commercial intercourse reaching as far back as that epoch. They were able to spin and weave, and color cloth; and were acquainted with the use of mordants, the wonder in modern calico-printing. Pliny describes this process as used in Egypt, but evidently without understanding its nature. Writing-paper made of the papyrus is as old as the Pyramids. The Egyptians tanned leather ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... was a farmer, and the stirring life of a farmer's daughter in a new country, fell to her lot. To spin the garments she wore, to make cheese and butter, were parts of her education, while to lend a hand at out-door labor, perhaps helped her to acquire that vigor of body and brain for which ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... I may call again and spin another yarn about old times," he answered, as he took up ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... spin that wheel," he said to the technicians. One of them gave the wheel a spin and dropped the ball. It clattered on its merry way and dropped into ...
— ...Or Your Money Back • Gordon Randall Garrett
... boasting. From their emperor's reply to him, it appeared that they preferred war to a dishonourable peace; that they would take care not to expose themselves to the hazards of a battle against too formidable an enemy; and that, in short, they were resolved on making every sacrifice, in order to spin out the war, and ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... bullock him. It's the same thing all along the line, it seems to me. When you can get work easily you get higher wages, shorter hours, some civility, and only do the fair thing. When you can't, wages come down, hours spin out, the boss puts on side, and you've got to work ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... pass that first guy had made at him. Then, when the second one showed up and dove in, he'd gone into a dead-duck spin. So far, so good. Evidently, they'd been fooled. Probably never saw that gag before. But what had happened after that? He searched ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... as soon as the latter is hatched, it is placed on mulberry-leaves, and for five weeks it does nothing but eat, in that time consuming many times its weight of food.[33] Then it begins to spin the material that forms its chrysalis case or cocoon. The outer part of the case consists of a tough envelope not unlike coarse tissue-paper; the inner part is a fine thread about one thousand feet long that has been wound around the body of the worm. This thread or filament is the basis of the ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... switchman and started out to limber up the "III." I asked him to let me out on the main line, took a five-mile spin, and sidetracked for a freight train. While the man was unlocking the switch, I looked into the eyes and wondered what their owner was, or could be, or had been, to "Scar Faced" Hopkins, and—ran off the switch. Then I wondered if Hopkins was looking into those eyes when he and ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... and sort, and the muscles of steel retain their faithful gripe, and enormous energies run to and fro with an obedient click; while forces that tear the arteries of the earth and heave volcanoes, spin the fabric of an infant's robe, and weave the flowers in a ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... Tokroori will be spinning cotton, or working at something that will earn a few piastres. Even during the march, I have frequently seen my men gather the cotton from some deserted bush, and immediately improvise a spindle, by sticking a reed through a piece of camel-dung, with which they would spin the wool into thread, as they walked with the caravan. My Tokrooris had never been idle during the time they had been in my service, but they were at work in the camp during every spare minute, either employed in making sandals ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... were washed into a quiet backwater, in a corner, and from here I determined never to issue till the Last Banjo should indeed sound. Here I sidled vaguely about for a long time, hoping that I looked like a man preparing for some vast culminating feat, a side-step or a buzz or a double-Jazz-spin or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... little mice sat down to spin, Pussy passed by and she peeped in. What are you at, my fine little men? Making coats for gentlemen. Shall I come in and cut off your threads? Oh, no, Miss Pussy, you'd bite ...
— The Tailor of Gloucester • Beatrix Potter
... public, some conscientiousness of production in the artist. If artistic creation be not a joy, an imperious necessity, an instinct of all the forces of the mind, let the boy go and plough, and the girl go and spin." ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... to the engine room. With the help of the boys he set in motion an auxiliary gravity machine, designed to exert a most powerful influence against the downward pull of the earth. As they watched the great wheels spin around, and heard the hum and whirr of the dynamos, the boys watched the pointer which indicated how low they ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... about twelve feet long and narrowing at the bows, which stood well out of water; handy enough for beaching, but not to be taken through breakers, by reason of its sitting low in the stern. O'Hara, as I yelled at him, pulled his starboard paddle and brought her (for these prams spin round easily) almost broadside on to a tall comber. As we slid up the side of it and hung there, I had a glimpse of a steep clean fissure straight through the wall of rock ahead; and in that instant O'Hara sprawled ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... one might do worse than dream of Hortense. But in spite of all your philosophers say about there being no world but the world we spin in our brains, I could not woo my lady back to it. Like the wind that bloweth where it listeth was my love. Try as I might to call up that pretty deceit of a Hortense about me in spirit, my perverse lady ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the German bullets spin overhead or crack like whips against our sandbags, sending little clods of earth down into the trench; all down the line we stand on our firing platforms, and answer back to the little spurts of flame which mark the enemy trench; ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... neighbours. Their climate is agreeable and healthy; the sky serene, the breezes gentle and delicious. They have numbers of shining groves, the trees of which through continued watering produce a crop like the fleece of a sheep, which the natives make into a delicate wool, and spin into a kind of fine cloth, formerly confined to the use of the nobles, but now procurable by the lowest ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Rachel serve: and I'll work the cost of my keep and more, you shall see. I can spin with the best, and weave too; you'll never come short of linen nor linsey while I'm with you—and Lettice can run about and save steps to us all. What think you?—said ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... religion, they will be in far too much haste, to wait to apply a strict test to their holy men's visions. Furthermore they will have so few visions, that any will awe them; so naturally they will accept any vision as valid. Then their rapid and fertile inventiveness will come into play, and spin the wildest creeds from each vision living ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... long. Yet would I have thee see my children. Forget not the token on my hand which thou holdest. But now get thee to thy folk with no more words; for after all, playmate, the sundering is grievous to me, and I would not spin ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... 'Spin me no spiders' webs of words. Is not the thing the same thing? The one giveth, the other taketh; but the gift passes, and what matters it which is the most guilty? Sorais! oh, I hate her — Sorais is a queen and my sister. She had not stooped so low had he not shown the ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... denied it in the court; but chile, the lie-yers are aworking day and night fur to hang you, and little is made of much, on your side, and much is spun out of little, on theirn. They are more cunning than foxes, and bloodthirstier than panters, and they no more git tired than the spiders, that spin and piece a web as fast as you break it. Three nights ago, I got down on my knees, and I kissed a little pink morocco slipper what your Ma wore the day when she took her first step from my arm to her own mother's knees, and I swore a solemn oath, if I could help free ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... "I'll spin my yarn as soon as I've rested a hit, lads," he said, as he finished the last morsel of food. "I'm clean spent, now, and want to stretch ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... blue spots on their heads. Mamma caught them for me, and we put them on a board with some ailantus leaves, and turned a large wire sieve over them. Every morning I gave them fresh leaves to eat, and in two or three days they began to spin themselves into cocoons. Some rolled themselves up in the leaves, while others clung to the side of the sieve, covering themselves at first with a thin white film, through which we could see the worm for half a day working himself back and forth. Then the film grew so thick we could ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... dancing in the flax. But many superstitions have clustered round the latter plant, it having in years gone by been a popular notion that it will only flower at the time of day on which it was originally sown. To spin on Saturday is said in Germany to bring ill fortune, and as a warning the following legend is among the household tales of the peasantry:—"Two old women, good friends, were the most industrious spinners ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Redgrave; "I can do about a hundred and fifty an hour through the atmosphere, and then, you see, if that isn't fast enough I can rise outside the earth's attraction, let it spin round, and then come down where ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... imposed on every woman wearing her hair cut short like a man's; all gaming for amusement or gain was forbidden, and cards and dice were not permitted in the colony. A father was fined if his daughter did not spin as much flax or wool as the selectmen required of her. No Jesuit or Roman Catholic priest was permitted to make his residence within the colony. All persons were forbidden to run or even walk, "except to and from church" on Sunday, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... leaned back to appraise the effect of this startling proposition on me. At any other moment I should inevitably have broken loose again, but the fascination of his personality was upon me and I let him spin his webs. Any man, and there are scores adrift, who falls under the spell of Henry H. Rogers, invariably, as did the suitors of Circe, pays the penalty of his indiscretion. Some he uses and contemptuously casts aside useless; others he works, plays, and pensions; still others serve as jackals ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Abiah Folger began to spin again, and the wheel and the wind united did indeed make a lonely atmosphere. Uncle Benjamin punched the fire, which roared at times lustily under the great shelf where were a row ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband, when he'd be putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate, as he often had to do—because of her mainly. Old diggers said that it was lovely to see how she'd spin up a heavy green-hide bucket full of clay and 'tailings', and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist. Most men were afraid of her, and few diggers' wives were strong-minded enough to seek a second row with Mother Middleton. Her voice could be heard right across ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... who, being nothing but hands, evidently cannot say, "I beg your pardon, miss." There were children, who always will go where they ought not to go, running against people, and taking hold of their clothes with sticky, smeared hands, asking commercial gentlemen to spin their tops, and corpulent ladies to play at hide and seek. I saw one stern-visaged gentleman tormented in this way till he looked ready to give the child its "final quietus." [Footnote: American juveniles are, generally speaking, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... weakened by a long course of romance writing, did not come to the rescue. As usual Beth lay on the sofa and Laurie sat in a low chair close by, amusing her with all sorts of gossip, for she depended on her weekly 'spin', and he never disappointed her. But that evening Jo fancied that Beth's eyes rested on the lively, dark face beside her with peculiar pleasure, and that she listened with intense interest to an account of some exciting cricket match, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... GRUB is often very injurious. The moth measures about 1/2 inch across, the caterpillars are pale red, with brown neck and black head. They pierce and drop with the fruit, seek shelter in the bark, where they spin a cocoon and pass the winter. If the trees have been scraped, then washed with a mixture of lime and soot, paraffin and grease (see No. III. pears), or sprayed before the buds open with Bordeaux mixture (see No. II.), and also afterwards, ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... play incessantly on the first reclaiming chord which led our ancestral satyr to the measures of the dance, the threading of the maze, and the setting conformably to his partner before it was accorded to him to spin her with both hands and a chirrup of his frisky heels. To keep him in awe and hold him enchained, there are things she must never do, dare never say, must not think. She must be cloistral. Now, strange and awful though it be to hear, women perceive this requirement ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eke Corin Were herdmen both yfere: And Phillida could twist and spin And therto sing ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... grew fainter, and the moon's silver brightened, the passengers became quieter. The Piper went below and listened to the Ancient Mariner spin a yarn, and let the birds along the shore furnish music. The babies fell asleep in the arms of Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby, lovers drifted away in pairs to retired nooks. In a quiet corner J. P. Thornton and Lawyer Ed sat and laid once more their final plans for a trip to the Holy Land, certain ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... her mind. At last on the fourth day she ceased to weep and would answer our questions in a low voice, as if resigned; but spent the greater part of every day sitting silently at her wheel. Her fingers, however, which used to be so skilful, either broke the threads they tried to spin, or lay for hours idle in her lap, while she was lost in dreams. Your father's jokes, at which she used to laugh so heartily, made no impression on her, and when I endeavored to reason with her she listened in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... after all, and if we are, there ain't nothing I won't do to make it easier for you, sir, and we'll cut and run, as the sailors say, some day. Ups and downs in life we see; right-tooral-looral-looral-lee. There's only heads and tails to a penny, and if you spin it up in the air, it sometimes comes down one side, and sometimes the other. Well, it's come down wrong way for us this time, next time p'r'aps it may come down right. If it don't, well, you've got too much pluck in you to howl about it: so have ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... women lie like the very devil. You just go and talk with her a bit about her first fall. She'll spin ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... her own rude childhood, she learned to spin the wools, white and grey, to clothe and cover him pleasantly. The spectacle of his unsuspicious happiness, though at present a matter of purely physical conditions, awoke a strange sense of poetry, a kind of artistic sense in her, watching, as her own long-deferred recreation ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... well-defined physical type. They are of medium stature or tall. Their noses are the largest and most prominent in indian Mexico, and are boldly aquiline. The men are rarely idle; even as they walk, they carry with them their netting, or spindle with which they spin cord for making nets. It seems to be law, and is certainly custom, that persons coming to the plaza are expected to be more fully dressed than when travelling on the road or when in their homes. Usually white cotton drawers and shirt are worn in the plaza; outside, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... boy will strip nearly fifteen hundred in a day. But the kayar is not made from the husk, as might be supposed, but from the rind of the nut; which, after being long soaked in water, is beaten with mallets, and rubbed together into fibers. After this being dried in the sun, you may spin it, just like hemp, or any similar substance. The fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable ropes, extremely well adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the running rigging of a ship; while the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... did think there were a reprieve to come for you I would be contented to spin out the time thus; but in good earnest I expect none; unless you had an apprehension you were not to die you would not spin out the time thus, not thus run to ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... miserable still—it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the years. That was the feeling which possessed her now—the feeling of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked back she saw that there had never been a time when she had had ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... slaves of the Lamp, those Silkworms of the Closet, how little had they enjoyed, how little had they lived! Condemned to a mysterious fate by the wholesale destinies of the world, they seemed born but to toil and to spin thoughts for the common crowd—and, their task performed in drudgery and in darkness, to die when no further service could be wrung from their exhaustion. Names had they been in life, and as names they lived for ever, in life as in death, airy and unsubstantial ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fraud. Schiller evidently began the novel in no very strenuous frame of mind. He wished to profit by the popular interest in tales of mysterious charlatanry which had been aroused by the exploits of Cagliostro. So he set out to spin a yarn in that vein, but he had no definite plan and did not himself know where he would bring up. The literary merits of 'The Ghostseer', Schiller's most noteworthy attempt in prose fiction, will come up for consideration in connection with the conclusion, or rather the continuation, which ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... "She is my daughter. Yonder you see my latter muse for whose dear sake I spin romances. I do not mean that she takes any lively interest in them. That is not to be expected, since she cannot read or write. Ask her about the poet we were discussing, and I very much fear Judith will bluntly inform you she cannot ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... could not put any life in him. When daylight came in the morning, the Princess with the long nose came too, and once more drove her away. When day had quite come, the girl seated herself under the castle windows, to spin with her golden spinning-wheel, and the Princess with the long nose wanted to have that also. So she opened the window, and asked what she would take for it. The girl said what she had said on each of the former occasions—that it was not for sale either for gold or for money, but if she could ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... useful, but it is a little dangerous! I don't think you have suffered as yet. That's what I like in you, Howard, the mixture of practical and unpractical. You seem to me to be very busy, and yet to know where to stop. Of course we can't make other people a present of experience; they have to spin their own webs; but I think one can do a certain amount in seeing that they have experience. It would not suit me; my strength is to sit still, as the Bible says. But in a place like this with Frank whipping his tops—he whips them, while ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... It is very bumpy and ends in a big drift; not half so nice as this one. Hop on and we'll have a good spin across the pond;" and Jack brought "Thunderbolt" round with a skilful swing and an engaging air that would have won obedience from anybody ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... now a mind to try how many cobwebs a single spider could furnish; wherefore I destroyed this, and the insect set about another. When I destroyed the other also its whole stock seemed entirely exhausted, and it could spin no more. The arts it made use of to support itself, now deprived of its great means of subsistence, were indeed surprizing. I have seen it roll up its legs like a ball and lie motionless for hours together, but cautiously watching all the time. When a fly happened to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... million Germans should die, while he survives. It is ignorant, it is insincere, to put on a frown of offended virtue and to say: For shame, what are you thronging into the towns for? Go back to the land; plough, spin, weave, ply the blacksmith's hammer, as did our forefathers, who were the proper sort of people. And leave the people like us, who think and write poetry and brood and dream for you, a house embowered in ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... Du Guesclin proudly fixed his ransom at a hundred thousand francs, which seemed a large sum even to the Prince of Wales. "Sir," said Du Guesclin to him, "the king in whose keeping is France will lend me what I lack, and there is not a spinning wench in France who would not spin to gain for me what is necessary to put me out of your clutches." The advisers of the Prince of Wales would have had him think better of it, and break his promise; but "that which we have agreed to with him we will hold to," said the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... spun by the different larvae, both workers and drones spin complete cocoons, or inclose themselves on every side; royal larvae construct only imperfect cocoons, open behind, and enveloping only the head, thorax, and first ring of the abdomen; and Huber concludes, without any hesitation, that the final cause of their forming ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... children's tops is provided and the ability to spin them properly is demonstrated. A few musical tops among them ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... have done some good reading outside your classics, and have got a grip of French and German. The truth is, unless a man can get the prestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it's hardly worth while for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself and be able to spin you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse you'll give him as a cue. That's all very fine, but in practical life nobody does give you the cue for pages of Greek. In fact, it's a nicety of conversation which I would have you attend to—much ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... flowers in raiment fair, Wondrous to see on deserts bare. Neither they spin nor weave nor sew Yet no king could such beauty show. The ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... for these, my wife, all life and animation, explained to me all the machines I must make, to enable her to spin and weave, and make linen to clothe us from head to foot; her eyes sparkled with delight as she spoke, and I promised her all ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... Timbuctoo. Mrs. Pilgrim was left at home to play "patience," and to keep the house and bairns. She was generally a long-suffering creature, but sometimes she did get into mischief. She could not always spin yarn, so she occasionally varied her task by weaving nets—traps for the unwary who was not ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Tom, "I don't count on going on any sort of a trip—that is, any long one. I was just getting ready to take a little spin in the Hawk, and if you'd ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... not spin this note any further, but shall be glad of a line to tell me you are well. I have not seen Mr. Lort since he roosted under the metropolitan Wings of his grace ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... are a thousand pathways, broad and narrow. They all go uphill.... Some day when you spin something out of your own inside, Mr. Banneker, forgive the well-meaning editor and let us see it. It might ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... other, Yeux-gris and Gervais. The latter was almost trampling on me, Yeux-gris had pressed him so close to the wall. Then he forced his way out, and they drove each other round in a circle till the room seemed to spin once more. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... millstone," he said. "Why don't you old turtlebacks come out of your shells and play square? You've got some shady game on here that you're working underhand. Spin your yarn and I'll tell you what ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... The minor heirs come and took it. I never learnt in books till I went to school. Seem like things was in a confusion after I got big nough for that. I'd sweep and rake and cook and wash the dishes, card, spin, hoe, scour the floors and tables. I would knit at night heap of times. We'd sing some ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... salmon-trout and maskilonge, is a piece of brass, or copper, about the shape and size of the bowl of a tablespoon, with a large hook soldered upon the narrow end. If properly made, and drawn fast through the water, it will spin round and glitter, and thus is sure to attract the fish. I have caught hundreds by this method, and can therefore recommend it as the most certain. Your trolling line, which is attached to your left arm, should not ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... through the populous village, which is noted for its industries. Of all the Lebanon towns, this is, indeed, the busiest; its looms, its potteries, and its bell foundries, are never idle. And the people cultivate little of the silk worm; they are mostly artisans. American cotton they spin, and dye, and weave into substantial cloth; Belgian iron they melt and cast into bells; and from their native soil they dig the clay which they mould into earthenware. The tintinnabulations of the loom can ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... straw hats for the family. The journeyman shoemaker dropped in and fitted out the family with boots. The great city industries were then unknown. The farmer's wife in those days was perhaps the most expert master of trades ever known. She could spin and weave, make a carpet or a rug, dye yarns and clothes, and make a straw hat or a birch broom. Butter, cheese, and maple sugar were products of her skill, as well as bread, soap, canned fruits, and home-made wine. In those days the farm was a miniature factory or combination of factories. ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... degree; as Mr. Brent remarks (5/16. 'Journal of Horticulture' October 22, 1861 page 76.), "Every few seconds over they go; one, two, or three summersaults at a time. Here and there a bird gives a very quick and rapid spin, revolving like a wheel, though they sometimes lose their balance, and make a rather ungraceful fall, in which they occasionally hurt themselves by striking some object." From Madras I have received several specimens of the common Tumbler of India, differing slightly from ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... no. It's no muckle that that comes till. I wadna spin sae weel gin it warna that the Almichty pat some sicht into the pints o' my fingers, 'cause there was nane left i' my een. An' gin ye mak ither thrippence a week oot o' that, ye'll be turnin' the wather that He sent to ca my mill into your dam; an' I doot it'll play ill water ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... said the King, and he went up into the garret and brought her down more flax than she could spin in a hundred years. But the Queen still looked sad, and the King asked her again what was the matter. She answered that she had been walking by the river and had dropped one of her green satin slippers ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... paralyzing him. Still the grasp, the gaze, continue; as Vivia watches that look, a great blue glow from those eyes seems to cloud her own brain. The color rises on Ray's cheeks, his angry eyes fall, his chest heaves, his lips tremble, off from the long black lashes spin sprays of tears, he cannot move, he is so closely held, but slowly he turns his head, meets the red lips of the forgiving girl with his, then casts himself with sobs on Beltran's breast. And all that evening, as the sudden heavy clouds drive down and quench ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... long since fallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown ceremonial,—what you in your iconoclast humor call shams, all his life long; never heard that there was any harm in them, that there was any getting on without them. Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams? Kings reigned, what they were pleased to call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... he said quietly. "Half-an-hour more or less won't make much difference to you on the road. You were talking of travellers' tales, and I reckon you were thinking of fairy yarns that some folks think it smart to spin. Well, maybe those same stories have some foundation in fact, and ain't all works of imagination. Anyhow, my experience has taught me never to disbelieve until I've some good ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... Phronsie, as Polly put her down, and stood breathless after her last glorious spin, "I do so wish we might, Polly; oh, ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... had been lucky. This house, where he was born, was lucky,—no one had ever died in it. When his dear mother could not spin any more, they carried her to the Hooghly on a charpoy, and she had breathed her last on the banks of the sacred river. Besides, his grandfather had immediately stuck up a cooking-pot, striped with perpendicular white lines, on a pole at the side of the house; so he had never been in any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... gowd rings ye may buy, maidens, Green mantles ye may spin; But, gin ye lose your maidenheid, Ye'll ne'er ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... won't be so pleasant," he said, making a long face. "However, we shall meet at the end of them; and won't we spin long yarns ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... and soon after removed to Ohio. The girl remained at the old homestead, keeping house for the only brother, and so well did she do the work, that he gave her a dollar a week for her services. This she used in buying books and clothes for school. Besides, she found opportunities to spin and weave for some of the neighbors, and thus added a little ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... then a day's help or a bee,—but a bee's about as broad as it is long,—and we raise just enough to help the year out, but don't sell. We've got a cow and the filly and some sheep; and mother shears and cards, and Lurindy spins,—I can't spin, it makes my head swim,—and I knit, knit socks and sell them. Sometimes I have needles almost as big as a pipe-stem, and choose the coarse, uneven yarn of the thrums, and then the work goes off ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... the floor and range themselves in place. The men in authority coolly proceed to collect a tax of two sous from each couple, and then the music and the dance begin. In waltzing the dancers simply put their arms around each other's necks, and thus embracing vigorously, face to face, they spin about the room, bumping against each other, laughing, shouting and chaffing. Waiters in white aprons dodge about among the dancers, taking orders for wine, beer and punch, and exciting our constant amazement that they do ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... down but one good mouthful, I saw M. de Perrencourt lean right across the table. Yet I saw him dimly, for my eyes seemed to grow glazed and the room to spin round me, the figures at the table taking strange shapes and weird dim faces, and a singing sounding in my ears, as though the sea roared there and not on Dover beach. There was a woman's cry, and a man's arm shot out at me. I felt a sharp blow on my wrist, the cup ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... without hearing what a man has to say in his own defence—there's ne'er a Tartar in the sarvice but would allow a man to speak before he orders him to strip. I recollect a story about that in the sarvice, but I'm in no humour to spin a yarn now. Now, you see, Jacob, Master Drummond has done a great deal for you, and now he has undone a great deal! I can't pretend to balance the account, but it does appear to me that you don't owe him much; for what thanks is there if you ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... think him a lamiter, yet, grippie for grippie, he'll make the bluid spin frae under your nails" ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... spin a yarn Twice laid with words of silken stuff. A fact's a fact; and ye may larn The rights o' this, though wild and rough My words may loom. 'Tis your consarn, Not mine, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... by the buffaloes forming baths for themselves by ripping the earth open with their heads in soft, oozy spots, and the burrowing of that sharp and watchful little animal the prairie dog, cause both horse and horseman to run considerable risk when taking a spin over the flat. Hill and dale, bluff and level, the landscape broke upon the eye in one of those infinite and fruitful wastes, which strikes the mind with awe at its grand ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... of the famous Torywood blue roans. It was an agreeable variation in modern locomotion to be met at a station with high-class horseflesh instead of the ubiquitous motor, and the landscape was not of such a nature that one wished to be whirled through it in a cloud of dust. After a quick spin of some ten or fifteen minutes through twisting hedge-girt country roads, the roans turned in at a wide gateway, and went with dancing, rhythmic step along the park drive. The screen of oak-crowned upland suddenly fell away and a grey sharp-cornered building came into view in ...
— When William Came • Saki
... out for exercise). Ah! don't look so bad, ARTHUR, after his spin! They are asking all round if he'll run, if he'll win. They would like much to know, I've no manner of doubt. Why, there isn't a Bookie, a Tipster, or Tout, Not to mention an Owner, or Trainer, or Vet, But desires the straight tip—which I wish they may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... the Tower Room. PRINCESS WINSOME and HERO. Godmother brings spinning-wheel on which Princess is to spin Love's golden thread that shall rescue her brother. Dove comes with letter from Knight. Flower messengers in turn report his progress. Counting the Daisy's petals the Princess learns that her true Knight has ...
— The Rescue of the Princess Winsome - A Fairy Play for Old and Young • Annie Fellows-Johnston and Albion Fellows Bacon
... censured, for passing sentence on several persons as being the instruments of Satan in those diabolical operations, when they were involved in such a dark and dismal scene of providence, in which Satan did seem to spin a finer thread of spiritual wickedness than in the ordinary methods of witchcraft: hence the judges, desiring to bear due testimony against such diabolical practices, were inclined to admit the validity of such a sort of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... lungi un bel cespuglio vede Di spin fioriti e di vermiglic rose, Che de le liquide onde al specchio siede, Chiuso dal Sol fra l' ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... quite simple. First a colorless globe, mounted so as to spin freely on its axis. Then a measured scale of value, specially devised for this purpose, obtained by the daylight photometer.[28] Next a set of carefully chosen pigments, whose reasonable permanence has been tested by long use, and which are prepared so that ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... politely - Mother smiles (but not too brightly) - Doctor mumbles like a dumb thing - Nurse is busy mixing something. - Every symptom tends to show You're decidedly DE TROP - Ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! he! ho! ho! Time's teetotum, If you spin it, Give its quotum Once a minute: I'll go bail You hit the nail, And if you fail The deuce is ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... turnpike-keeper had managed to find his way to the court-house of the army-corps. He had been wandering through street after street; the busy traffic of the capital had made his head spin, and he was tired to death with this unwonted tramping ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... "Spin, spin, Clotho, spin," hummed a gay, masculine voice. "Methinks, fair Mistress Dorris, even the Fates themselves could not be more devoted to their task than are you to that busy ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various |
